The present invention generally relates to music theory. More particularly, the present invention relates to a system and method for algorithmic tonal analysis and musical notation search.
Tonal analysis is an element of the field of music theory and musical analysis. While a written musical score represents the musical notes that make up a musical work, music theory provides an explanatory framework for musical organization, patterns, and structure that have not been explicitly written into the score. Analysis of a musical score relies on principles of music theory to identify characteristics of the written musical notes that convey concepts such as chords, harmonies, and tones.
In musical performance, notes may be performed by instruments or voices, and each set of notes played by a particular instrument or voice constitutes a part. A chord refers to a set of musical notes sounded together, and harmony refers to the use of chords and their constituent notes in conjunction to produce a desired musical effect. Notes and chords may have particular roles or functions in producing a desired harmonic progression, and knowledge of these functions informs how a note or chord should be played by a musician. A note which is not a part of a chord may be referred to as a non-harmonic tone, though it may still play a role in the overall harmony of a musical work.
The human skill of musical analysis is learned over a course of years of music education to understand the underlying principles of music theory, as well as extensive practice to be able to apply this knowledge to a musical score on a first impression. Whereas the form of the elements of a musical score, such as the identity of each individual chord, may be determined by routine examination of the notes and intervals written in a musical score, the function of those same elements is not readily apparent. A variety of functional theories may be possible to explain the function of each chord of a musical score, but not all such theories can be correct. The manual analysis of functional theories may, consequently, be time-consuming and fallible in practice.
Moreover, the education of musical analysis skills requires students to be tested in the application of imparted knowledge and principles. By known methods of teaching musical analysis, students must manually write down compositions and the results of functional analysis of compositions, and present these solutions to instructors for manual review. The instructor must review both the compositions presented to the student and any compositions and analysis results written by the student, analyze both, and compare results to determine errors. No systematic procedure for such comparison has been developed.